Ego
by SgtPastulio
Summary: SetoXOC. One-shot. "Why don't you have a girlfriend, Seto?" "Because I hate everyone." "But--" "EVERYONE." A side-story of 'He's Like A Knife In My Head'.


Seto Kaiba strode purposefully through the mathematics wing of Domino High School, with the full intention of getting out. He hated this stupid school, he hated the stupid, community college credential teachers, and he especially hated all of the stupid sheep students. And, being in his senior year, he was even more sick of everything than he usual. It was three weeks from graduation, and he was ready to leave this mindless place and run his company without any more interruptions. Like school.

"Oh, not you again~!

It gets worse every time..."

It really was becoming harder and harder for Seto to force himself to go to school in the morning. He had a nasty case of Senioritis, and he knew it. It was just dealing with people that really got him. He could have gone to a private school. He could have studied abroad. But no. He wanted to experience real high school life, like the stupid teenager he had been when he decided that he wanted to come to this God-awful place. A breeding ground for stupid.

"And one plus two again~

Won't work. I can't divide it!"

It was just that the intelligence level of the average student at Domino High was seemingly less than zero. Every day, couples making out in every corner of the school, smokers huddled together back behind the bleachers, the bullies shaking down the dweebs for lunch money. And then there was Seto. Who just didn't give a good goddamn about anyone. And had the money to keep everyone as far the fuck enough away from him as humanly possible.

"Well, let it go, I don't care!

I love you when you're not th-- OI!"

And here was one of the degenerates, now, bumping right into him without a care in the world. He knew her face, but not her name. They shared a class or two, not that he cared enough to make any connection other than that. She was a decent looking girl, her auburn hair short and choppy, with hazel eyes to match. She was what the other boys would call 'cute', but she was what Seto would call 'annoying'.

"Excuse you, Seto Kaiba." she quipped, gathering up her fallen books and papers from the floor and inserting her jostled earbud back into its proper place in her ear, "Take a Xanax when you get home, you look like you're gonna rip someone's head off."

He grunted a response before continuing on his way, even more peeved than before, if that was possible. Someone was so getting fired at work today.

*****

"Jeez, Seto, you look awful." Mokuba frowned, gazing at his older brother from the security of the oak door frame. Seto was laying face-down on his bed, not quite asleep, but not quite energetic enough to do anything other than just lay there. The raven-haired, scruffy-headed youth went to join his brother on the bed, plopping down next to him and going through his side-table drawers. "Why so glum, big brother? Three weeks until Graduation! You should be elated."

Seto grunted a muffled response, before turning his head to face the younger boy. "I hate everything."

"No you don't." Mokuba laughed, rifling through hairbrushes and pomade and paperclips, "You're just stressed. You'll be fine in three weeks."

"I hate everything." Seto repeated, folding his arms under his chin, "I'm sick of that school."

Mokuba paused in his search through his brother's drawer, and turned to the CEO. "Why don't you have a girlfriend, Seto?"

"Don't make me say it again, Mokuba." Now, that was a stupid question. Mokuba knew why he didn't have a girlfriend; he didn't date those stupid girls at the school, and he wasn't interested in the gold-digging whores at Kaiba Corp. Sure, some of them were cute, but none of them were worth fantasizing over, let alone dating or marrying.

"I know, I know, it's just that you haven't had any girlfriends... ever!" said Mokuba, "Maybe if you had a girlfriend, you wouldn't be quite as stressed."

"The stupid is stressing me out." Seto explained, "I don't need a girlfriend to relieve my stress."

"Yeah, and apparently you don't need a girlfriend to get off, either." the younger snickered, tossing a porn magazine and a bottle of KY gel at the elder Kaiba, "You should at least go on a date before you graduate. Have at least one happy memory from high school."

"Dating one of those skanks isn't going to make me happy." Seto said, cheeks afire with a coral blush as he stashed away his pornography, "They're just after my money, anyway."

"Maybe it's not that you don't want to date anyone..." Mokuba grinned, the cogs in his scheming mind turning, "It's that you can't get a date."

Seto turned to his younger brother, studying him carefully. "I could have any woman I wanted."

"Oh?" Mokuba asked, a smug smirk at his lips, "I bet you can't."

Seto's competitive nature was brought to life at the prospect of a bet. It was a challenge he wanted? Well, fine. That was what Mokuba was going to get. "I bet I can." said Seto, "I bet you that I can land a date with whoever I want before the end of the school year."

"Fine, I'd like to see you try." Mokuba challenged, "But it has to be one girl. You can't just ask and ask until you get a bite. Pick one girl. And if you break one of the rules or can't get a date, you have to take me to a full day at the water park."

"Deal." Seto grinned, ten times as lively as he had been fifteen minutes ago, "And if I win?"

Mokuba smiled then, shaking his head. "If you win, you'll have yourself a girlfriend."

Seto faltered then, truly thinking it over. Mokuba was right, really. Ideally, if he could pick a nice girl, and date her, he might have a steady girlfriend... But who cared about that!? This wasn't about finding a girlfriend, this was about winning! And proving a point! Proving that he could have whoever he wanted, and that it was a personal choice to not date just any gold-digging bitch.

"And..." said Mokuba, adding a bit more to the bet, "You have to get a goodnight kiss."

"Well, pick a girl." Seto smirked, going to his book shelf and handing him a yearbook from the previous year, "Any girl at all. I'm just not dating any underclassmen. I do have a reputation to worry about. I don't want to be seen as a pedophile."

"Give me that." Mokuba laughed, flipping to Seto's grade and scanning through the girls in his class, "She's cute."

"Who?"

"Calm down, I get to pick!" he snickered, "Yep. I pick her. She's really cute."

"Who is it, Mok... fuck..." Seto trailed off, laying eyes on the picture of the girl Mokuba had picked for him to date. Ren Kuroki. The girl he had bumped into earlier today. He knew exactly who she was now. But he wouldn't argue! He had agreed to the terms of the bet, and wouldn't go back on his word. He would date Ren Kuroki, and she would damn well like it. After all, he was Seto Kaiba. What was there not to love?

*****

Mission. Seto was on a mission. Walk right up to Ren Kuroki. Get her alone. Ask her on a date. Catch her when she swooned. Date her. Potentially have sex with her. Kiss her goodnight. Done. End of story. Hands washed.

It was a lot harder than it sounded, really. It would have been much easier if those stupid women didn't travel all together like that; they even went into the bathroom together! It was utterly impossible to get a moment alone with any of them, he didn't know how the other boys did it. But he knew when he could get her alone. Seto usually took his lunch in his Statistics class, the only quiet classroom on campus, and Ren was usually in there with him, having a nap or or catching up on her reading for English. He knew that was the only place he could talk to her privately, and if he couldn't, he would have to wait another day to beat Mokuba.

And it wasn't long before the lunch bell finally rang, and the students and teacher filed out of the classroom, leaving him alone with Ren. She was a relatively quiet girl in the classroom, by principle alone, but the minute she left the classroom, her headphones were back in, and she was singing at the top of her lungs. Badly. Not caring about anything else, just that music of hers. But she was soon to have a new care in her life, and that was going to be Seto.

He turned around to check if everyone else had already left, and he was met with the top of her head, her face buried in the pillow of her arms. She was fast asleep on her desk, snoozing right through her lunch. How could she sleep when Seto had a proposition such as this for her!? No matter. He would rouse her from her nap, and she would be happy that he woke her.

"Kuroki." Seto whispered, trying to get her attention. No answer. Her peaceful, measured breathing told him that she was still fast asleep. So he tried again, louder this time. "Kuroki."

She lifted her head, giving him a sleepy gaze as she pulled out one of her earbuds. "Can I help you, Seto?"

"Let me take you out to dinner tonight, Kuroki." he said. She looked him right in the eyes, blinked, and uttered just one syllable.

"No."

And she stuffed her earbud back into her ear and dropped her head back onto her arms.

Seto nodded, turning back around in his seat to focus on his book. He took one look down at the page, read the word 'preposterous', and turned back around to Ren. "Why?"

She lifted her head again, combing a hand through her hair. "'Why', what?"

"Why won't you go out with me?"

"Ha!" she laughed, flopping back down onto her desk, shaking her head in her arms, "EL OH FUCKING EL."

Seto scoffed, rolling his eyes. Stupid girl. "It's a valid question."

She looked back up at him again, a smirk at her lips. "You really don't know why I wouldn't want to go out with you?"

He stared at her, an even, honest gaze, and she sighed, removing both headphones from her ears and even going so far as to hit pause on her iPod. "I don't want to go out with you because you're an egotistical douche bag, and you think that you're better than everyone else because you're the self-proclaimed 'Master' of a children's card game. Fair enough?"

He held her gaze for a moment, eyes locking with her pretty hazel ones. Ren looked away first, focusing her attention on her bright grape sneaker. "Look, if you really want to go out with me..." She paused, tearing a piece of paper from her composition book and scribbling something on it. She handed it off to Seto. "There's my phone number and my address. You'll pick me up at five. We're going to dinner and a movie. I hate French food, and I love musicals. We're not going to 'Lover's Lane', and you'll have me home by one."

Seto blinked. He was holding her home address. And her phone number. This was the first time he'd asked a girl out since... ever. "See you at five, Seto."

And with that, she screwed the buds back into her ears and fell back onto the desk, lost in her own world again.

*****

Stressful. This 'dating' nonsense was stressful. Mokuba said this was supposed to relieve stress? Ha! Seto had spent a full hour and a half after school showering, shaving, stressing over what to wear, stressing over which car to drive, and stressing over which flowers to buy. NOT THAT HE GAVE A SHIT, OR ANYTHING. He just wanted to prove to Mokuba that he was actually trying.

So there he was, parked in front of Ren Kuroki's house, with a bouquet of wildflowers in the passenger's seat of the Beamer, and a cold sweat at the back of his neck. But he could do this. He was Seto Kaiba, and he could take one stupid girl out to dinner and a movie.

Grabbing the flowers, he stepped out of the car and strode right up the walkway and rang the doorbell, waiting patiently for Ren to answer the door. It was a few minutes before five, he was right on time.

The door swung open and he was met with not Ren, but a miniature version of the girl, a small, middle-school girl peering up at him with her big brown eyes. "Seto Kaiba?"

Before he had the chance to answer her, the child was yelling up the stairs, "Ren! Your dumb date is here!"

"Okay, okay!" the elder girl exclaimed, rushing down the stairs in a powdery yellow number and shooing her sister away from the door, "Get outta here, Karin, I'll be home later."

"Here." said Seto, tearing his gaze away from her rather feminine dress and figure long enough to hand her the flowers, "They're..."

"Oh!" she said, surprised. She took the flowers and took a moment to inhale the fragrance. "Wildflowers! Thank you. That's earned you some brownie points. Later, Karin."

Seto frowned, working over the idea of 'brownie points'. Was this something that all women did? He opened the passenger's seat door for her and helped her into the car, knowing to at least treat her... decently before he kicked her to the curb.

"So, where are we going tonight?" asked Ren, fiddling with the canvas bag in her lap, "What've you got planned?"

"A play. Man of La Mancha, and then a Greek dinner afterwards." he said, taking off down the street and making his way to the heart of the city, "Does that sound good?"

She snickered, shaking her head and looking straight forward out the window. "Funny. I didn't think you listened to anyone but yourself. Should be fun. I love exotic food, and I read the review of Man of La Mancha. I hear the cast is superb."

Seto nodded politely, trying to be as gentlemanly as was humanly possible. But really, he just didn't know what to say. Usually he just said 'Hi, I'm Seto Kaiba. Wanna fuck?' and bam, the girl was in bed. He just needed a kiss, and he had to go the whole nine for this one! A long, awkward silence drew out between the pair, before Ren took the initiative to flick on the radio and find a station of her liking.

"Oh, I love these guys!" she sighed, beginning to sing along to the unfamiliar upbeat tune, "Do you know them?"

He smirked, shaking his head. Well, if anything, she was amusing. In a stupid kind of way.

*****

"So... what's it like?" Ren asked, lifting a forkful of pasta to her lips, "Running a business like you do. It's got to be stressful, right?"

Seto half shrugged, having a sip of his mineral water. "School is worse than work. I don't like dealing with people."

"I hear you there." she grinned. shaking her head in mock disgust, "I don't ever want to be a dumb sheep like most of those people are."

He nodded, regarding her quietly while she ate. She was interesting, to say the least, and he felt like he knew her a lot better after just one dinner. She was quiet in class because she didn't have anything to say to the others, and she was loud outside because she really just didn't give a damn about others' opinions of her. She aspired to be a photographer, and she rode a moped around because it was easier to clean and the mod helmet looked stylish.

Ren was practical, intelligent enough to hold a conversation with, and just the slightest bit annoying in how she just didn't give a crap about anything.

And Seto still didn't know what he thought about her.

"Ohmygosh, is that Seto Kaiba and a date!?" Just as Seto was starting to get comfortable, a loud bespectacled woman rushed their table, pen and pad of paper in hand. Wonderfuckingful. Seto closed his eyes, a headache pulsing in his temples. He was lucky it at least didn't happen sooner, while they were at the play. "Seto, darling, baby, it's wonderful to see you out of your office and on a date with a girl. What's your name, sweetheart? You're front page news tomorrow morning!"

Ren smiled sweetly, showing pearly teeth. She spoke clearly and evenly for the reporter, "I'm not his date; sorry to disappoint you. This is a social experiment for school. We're trying to see what portion of the population will willingly interrupt a celebrity in the middle of their 'date'. Thanks for being a part of our project - you're the first one."

The woman blushed a deep beet red, before retreating from the table, leaving the pair alone again. Seto sighed, reaching into the pocket of his black dress vest for his wallet.

"Let's get out of here." he said, dropping a few bills onto the table and rising to his feet, "I don't want that happening again."

His date nodded in agreement; what else was she to do? Tell him no? She spoke again when in the car, driving out of the city and towards the suburbs.

"Why'd you ask me out?" Ren asked, twirling a pen around in her hands, eyes off of him, "You hate just about everyone at that school, I'm really no different. Frankly, I was under the impression that you found me particularly annoying. So why me? You could have gotten someone... easier."

Seto smirked, shaking his head. She was a lot more perceptive than she let on. But he didn't know if he wanted to tell her the truth or just lie to her. He didn't like her, so he didn't want to lie to her to spare her feelings. Not that he would tell such a volatile lie in the first place. But he also didn't think that she would care if he told her the truth.

"I'll bet that you lost a bet." she snickered, shaking her head, "So, who did you lose to? I bet it was that Jonouchi kid. You know him, right? No, I can't see you losing to him. Was it Yugi?"

"My brother bet me that I couldn't successfully get a girl to go out with me." Kaiba admitted, the words just sort of falling out of his mouth before he could stop them, "He picked you out of the yearbook, I had no say in the matter. If it had been my decision, I would have picked someone skankier. Just because I like to win."

She laughed aloud, shaking her head in amusement. "You're a piece of work, Seto Kaiba."

"It would have been easier to win," he reasoned, rolling to a stop in front of Ren's suburban home, "But what's life without a challenge?"

She smiled then, and before he had time to react, she had her lips pressed to his. She lingered just long enough for him to register what was happening, before she pulled away, gathering up her things.

"I had a good time, Seto. See you in class!"

And she was gone, flouncing up the driveway and into the house.

"Yeah..." Seto mumbled numbly, "Yeah."

"A brand new song, just for you~

"I'm not sorry about the things I do..."


End file.
